A year’s recycling all adds up to 20,000 tonnes
ALMOST 20,000 tonnes of recycling has been collected by Calderdale Council’s collection service since the start of the first lockdown last year.
It has meant the service, operated in partnership with Suez recycling and recovery UK (SUEZ), has seen its busiest year ever, with the amount of waste collected at kerbside breaking previous records.
This has not been without its challenges with waste services subject to budget pressures while there have been varying impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the service this has involved a variety of challenges, including putting in place measures for staff to safely collect waste, managing any staff shortages due to illness or shielding requirements, handling 141,000 weekly collections across Calderdale and working extra hours to manage the huge increase in the amount of waste and recycling being collected.
The council says further issues arose with streets becoming inaccessible to the collection vehicles due to the number of cars parked with so many residents working from home or on furlough.
Since April 2020 the recycling has included almost 6,000 tonnes of glass, more than 5,000 tonnes of food waste, 4,700 tonnes of paper and cardboard, 2,700 tonnes of cans and plastic, 1,400 tonnes of garden waste and 300 tonnes of mixed recycling from flats, according to the council’s figures.
A prolonged period of ice and snow at the start of this year meaning the service had to be suspended on two days for the first time in three years saw SUEZ bring in extra vehicles in to deal with the missed collections and the usual increase in the volume of material presented for collection after Christmas.
As a result, the crews managed to collect 2,000 tonnes of recycling in January alone, said the council.
When restrictions allowed, Household Waste and Recycling
Centres (have continued to operate, with additional safety measures in place, at Halifax, Brighouse, Todmorden, Sowerby Bridge and Elland, recently inspected by the Health and Safety Executive.
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